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I just want to be 100% sure on this one. If you are hit by the 2, 4, 5, or 7s ability and you are forced to reveal your rank you do NOT get to use the ability right? This is strongly implied by the rulebook but I find it odd that it isn't explicitly stated except in the roundabout way of saying: "Note: An ability that forces a player to suffer wounds is not an attack." Being robbed of your ability would be super unapealing and I'm rather suprised that the rulebook doesn't explicitly state it so I just want to be certian.

1. There's no way for a location to ever have multiple gates. If a gate would open where there is already a gate then a monster surge happens instead.
2. Stays in the Sky till there is someone to attack
3. Dark refers to things you are garanteed to be able to get based on the specific location ability. Light refers to what type of this your are likely to get from an encounter there.

Yeah i was really really excited when I first heard about the Persoanl Stories. Even before they were announce I had wanted them cause I saw them as a great chance to balance out some of the less powerful characters and pump some life into the characters as a whole.
After it was released I was completly disapointed. It seemed like the only old character who had been given any thought whatsoever was Sister Mary whose PS did do a great job of making playing her feel new. There were so many other characters who should have gotten boosts that were much better thought out like Amanda, Mark and Pete not to mention players whose missions were really not boosts at all Like Willson, Darrel or any investigator who has to pay 5 clue tokens.
This is going to sound Sacreligions but they really should have gotten community input on this one. Release a few Prototypes to the community and we would have instantly been given the feedback rather than waiting till after it was set in stone and now we have to live with it.

Julia said:
allstar64 said:
Willson Richards might have lack luster stats but his starting Items are simply amazing.
It's his PS that kills him. Sure, you can use him to clean the streets and whatelse, but the idea that you can't use him to collect clues in the first turns because of the fail condition of his PS is really a big turn-off
Yeah to be fair he was a favorite pre Insomouth. I don't think I've had a chance to play him since Insomouth was relesed due mostly to not having many chances after I moved.

You know I never understood where the massive Vincent hate came from. Oh for sure I understand why people don't like him but never why he is hated to the degree he recieves. A 3 max speed 5 max sneak character IS idotic however he also has 5 Lore which is actually really good for casting splells and sealing and while healing stamina isn't as good as healing sanity there's no denying his stamina will take damage and not having to go out of your way to the hospital to fix it is very nice.
In just the base game I really feel there was no excuse to hate him more than Sister Mary. Sister Mary starts completly strapped while Vincent starts less than ideal but will a good sealing stat and a pile of money. Also I really dislike Amanda's lackluster stats and fairly ignorable ability.
Moving on to Dunwich and Rita quickly was added to my list of least favorite investigators. As far as I was concerned her ability was pretty pathetic. "Oh but wait" people say. "Her stats and starting items are amazing". Oh really? well lets compare her for a second to Joe Diamond and Darrle. If you do you'll find she has extreamly similar stats and starting items to both these investigators. However their abilities utterly obliterate hers. Whenever I play Rita I simply feel like I'm playing a massively watered down Joe Diamond or Darrle and just feels like I might as well be l playing one of them since I would find it a very similar experience and more fun overall.
Kingsport really didn't add anyone I didn't like. All the characters I felt had their own place and own identity and enough utility to be useful.
Now in Insomouth things got interesting. Sister Mary got a very well thought out personal story which really raised her utility up. Many of the other weak characters… did not. Vincent got a good reward from his PS but the cost of passing was way too much. Amanda should have gotten a PS to help her get skills. She did not. Rita's was also fairly lack luster. Even Mark Harigan who I felt desreved a will/sanity boost got a laughbly weak benefit for a incredibly steep passing requierment.
However Insomouth introduced the Investigator I have labled as The Worst Ivestigator in all of Arkham, George Barnaby. For the life of me I cannot figure out what you are supposed to do with him. Every other investigator has something useful that they do well whether its fighting monsters or jumping into gates. George has 3 speed 4 will 3 fight and 4 lore making him bad at moving, fighting monsters, casting spells and jumping into gates and once you remove those then what else is there really. If you are playing with Insomouth than he does gain some identity. There is a much larger chance of being arrested and being arrested in Insomouth is bad so that's 1 plus but again standing around not really doing anything else well does not a good character make.
Oh I don't really like Patrice, Mandy or Daisy but that's really because I feel they risk making the game too easy. Especially Patrice.
As for the charaqcters I like from each set, Bob Jenkins has always been my favorite base game. Willson Richards might have lack luster stats but his starting Items are simply amazing. I think everyone feels a sorta kinship with Rex Murphy from Kingsport cause who here isn't cursed? No favorites from Insomouth but there are a lot of people I really like from it.

You know it wasn't till your post that I finally understand why this is so confusing for new players.
This is how it works. The Power of the Administrative Building is:
Classes: Instead of having an encounter here, you may pay $8 to draw 2 Skills. Keep one of them and discard the other
So when Amanda goes there and uses its ability she draws 2 Skills and thanks to her ability she draws an additional skill for a total of three. Then her ability resolbves which is she must discard 1 of the skills so she's down to having 2. Than the Administrative Building resolves specifically where it says "Keep one of them and discard the other".
Basically although her skill lets her draw more and than discard ONE it does not overwrite the previous instruction to discard that was originally attached to the Admin Building. The other deck yankers are the same

For the record that order of spell casting is not consistant with the rules. This is what the rules says
To cast a spell, an investigator must pay its Sanity cost and then pass a Spell check.
To pay the Sanity cost of a spell, the player simply removes a number of Sanity tokens from his total equal to the cost of the spell. Players must always pay the Sanity cost of a spell, whether or not the investigator subsequently passes the Spell check.
So sanity is spent and you would hit 0 sanity even before you roll the die.

Yeah they really messed up some of the personal stories. I was so excited when they originally announced them cause I saw them as a means to rebalance a lot of the characters and open up new gameplay options with them most notably the weaker characters like Amanda or Mark (which they failed to do). Instead we got some good ones and a handful of unfair/weak ones (like all the characters that need to spend 5 clues to pass).
This is one instance where I think they should have unofficially released it to the user base and have them play test it and give feedback before releasing it officially. So much wasted potential.

It is illegal. Clue tokens only ADD to skill checks. They don't let you re-roll anything. This is significant cause if I use 3 clue tokens on a check and then get a re-roll from Mandy (the researcher) I re-roll all the extra die I "bought" using clue tokens.
Curse/Blessing/Retainer rolls are not skill checks so you cannot add die to them.

Press pass is pretty powerful at any time. I remember one time my friend got the encounter at Harney Jones' Shack that said
Harney's shed is overflowing with odds and ends. "Take some of this junk off my hands," he says. Search the Common Item deck for any one non-Weapon card and take it.
So he's looking through the deck and getting more anoyed that most of the expensive items are weapons and he's thinking of taking a motorcycle but then he comes across press pass and there was no longer and question in his mind what to take.

Don't forget Healing Stone and Flesh Ward. I currently have twice as many of both of those items cause I think there was a set of them that didn't include the discard against AO text.
On thats note I actually got that combination in the last game I played. Me and a friend were playing 2 investigators each. He had Daisy and Walters while I had Culiver linked to Walters with PotA. What this could mean dawned on us both. I was about to say that it probably doesn't work but he quickly said that it was fine and just let it be over powered this one time. Personally didn't have a problem with that so I shrugged and just let it be. It was nice cause he passed his mission early and I casted Voice of Ra every turn with Culiver.
The game itself went fairly well also and by well I mean turn 1 each investigator recived a power and then we kept getting Rekoning Cards that did bad stuff to people with power. Ultimately we got 2 investigators devoured, 1 due to the Reckoning and the other due to (get this) The Devouring Gate opening on him. We ended up winning in the end by taking advantage of power to seal quickly.

Hi all.
I recently found another Arkham group (My old one mostly graduated 2 years ago before me).
The new group say that they too have the lack of players problem so they were glad to find someone else who likes it.
They also say that they always have all the expansions mixed together but are aware of the dilution problem and have tried to figure out a fix but because they don't play it much they haven't had a chance to play test it.
Hence I'll share what they are thinking of doing.
I think they proposed making a mythos deck at the beginning containing 1 mythos card from each expansion and some number of base arkham cards. Then whenever a mythos card from a particular expansion is drawn they add 2 more cards from that expansion to the "created" mythos deck. That way they increase the chance of a particular expansion "doing something" .
In this way each game it's random which expansion gets center stage each game but all expansions have a presence.
Now I haven't tried this and I'm interested if there's a general way to handle the dilution issue that's generally agreed upon.

In response to the original question absolutly not. This would be identical to 5 players jumping through a gate, all 5 going through and then each trying to make the check untill one succeds yet only 1 of the investigators actually having 5 or more clues at the time and being allowed to seal it.
My biggest problem for the second issue is that most encounters that instruct you to close gates also say wether or not you can seal them. I'd rule that no in this case (most) investigators can't seal because they aren't teh ones doing the closeing
However to muddle the situation up more suppose that Akachi Onyele is the one working the machine. If she has 8 clue tokens could she close the 2 gate and seal them at the same time?

Well as long as we're all talking about him I might as well add some stuff about Pete.
Pete has always been on of my favorite characters but not without his issues. His 5 5 Fight Will split is uniquely his alone as of Insumouth and he starts with a total combined san+stam of 11. Unfortunatley he pays too much of his starting money for this as his ally (while having a dog with you is awsome) is pretty weak compared to other allies. Also his speed of 3 is killer and his sneak of 6 is more or less useless coupled with his low speed and focus. I believe that after base arkham the creators realized that 6 sneak only works on nich characters which is why the only other 2 char with sneak 6 are Wendy (sneaking embodied) and Trish (speed and sneak on different highly adjustable tracks).
As for his ability it's highly abusable if you want to play that game. Pair him with Daisy and in a few turns you can have both alchemic processes, and any (every) other power spell you want at the cost of a few turns (note I always play all item are in from all sets, makes you see a more interesting array of items in each game).
Even if he can't split his power while shopping he still allows for pretty easy hunting for elder signs. Just have a bunch of people (who I assume have nothing better to do cause there's a lul in clue tokens for example) go shopping with 0 money. If anyone finds an elder sign send it to the very bottom of the deck. Then have someone give pete 5 bucks to buy it back next turn, no splitting requiered. Does it work? Probably especially if there aren't a lot of clues to be had. Is it fun? not really since no one is really doing anything or having real encounters. Would I do it in one of my games? Only if it was imperitive that I win the game and clearly we NEED an elder sign, otherwise nope.
I would also like to mention how fun it is to have a crobar with him (though you need to "rules lawyer" an iffy rule in his favor). Get him blessed with max sneak (if you can raise his sneak even more with items, skills or allies then even better). Now discard the crobar to use its ability. He gets 4 blessed dice and for every success he can draw a common item. But wait he can draw from the bottom of the deck and what happens to be there? Why it's the crobar he just discarded, why not take it back and if he's lucky he's rolled more than one success he can steal another common item (or 2 or 3). Well that's over and done with, what next? Well I still have a crobar (which requiers no movement points to use btw). Why not try again.... and again... and (yada yada yada you see where this is going). If he manages to find both crobars and a makeup kit while doing this just hand him the entire common item deck cause nothing except 2 super unlucky rolls in a row can stop him. Maxed sneak and blessed he has a 8.33% chance of failing his roll (its actually 6.25%, he has a 1/16 chance of all 4 dice failing but when you ignore the 4/16 chance of rolling 1 success and breaking even it's actually a 8.33% chance of failing vs coming out on top) so his chance of being stopped is less than 5% with 2 crowbars.
The iffy rule I'm refering to is when an item is discarded. The text on the card and so many other cards makes it seem like it would be discarded imediatly and thus be there for scronging. However there is another case where it is very publicly agreed upon that it is discarded after the new investigator card is drawn from the top or bottom. Lola's ability is very very weak if it is discarded first and then you draw. I'm willing to accept the ruling that it isn't there because otherwise her ability is useless and Pete + crobar is way too good. However I don't care what anybody says if you ever see Pete with 2 crobars then he can pull this off and if he ever gets arested just go and buy one back and try again (helps a lot if you are the deputy cause you get arrest imunity and all the movement you want)